These vanilla cupcakes with cream-cheese frosting are perfect if you're looking for something sweet without the heaviness of chocolate


AUGUST 4, 08

RECIPE (+5photos)

Serves: 25 medium-sized cupcakes

Ingredients
CUPCAKE
Butter, 2 sticks (room temp)
Sugar, 1 1/3 cup
Eggs, 3 large
Sour cream, 1/2 cup (room temp)
Flour, 1 1/2 cup
Cornstarch, 1/4 cup (or tapioca starch)
Salt, 3/4 tsp
Baking soda, 1 tsp
ICING
Cream cheese, 1 cup (room temp)
Unsalted butter, 1 1/2 sticks (room temp)
Sugar, 3/4 cup
Vanilla extract, 2/3 tsp

1. Preeat the oven to 350F.
2. Cream the butter and sugar in the bowl until light and fluffy.
3. Beat in the eggs
4. Add the sour cream and vanilla.
5. Sift together the flour, cornstarch, salt, and baking soda in a bowl.
6. Add the flour mixture to the butter mixture until just combined.
7. Fill the cupcake liners to the 2/3-level with batter, and bake for 30 minutes, until a toothpick comes out clean and the edges are slightly golden-brown. (be careful not to let them overbake)

8. For the icing, mix the butter, cream cheese, sugar, and vanilla until smooth.
9. Spread generously over cooled cupcakes


(modified from original recipe here)


these may be plain, but they are also plain good! plain vanilla ftw!


the red&green collection centered around a large turquoise marble


close up of the turquoise marble collection.
the brown chips are butterscotch.


the inside.


for athena. i really enjoyed this last weekend in the kitchen (& out) with you! (:

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Nowadays I'm not so much into chocolatey stuff (don't get me wrong, I still love my chocs) because it's too rich. So now I go for milder sweets, and this cupcake just hits the right spot for me. I love it both plain and with the cream cheese frosting (not the frosting on its own though, unlike the chocolate ganache for Lebowitz's devil's food cake which is bloody good to lick off your finers, this frosting is just too sweet).

For me, when I left the cupcakes in for exactly thirty minutes, when the edges were slightly golden-brown but the top still quite white, I got the perfect texture of crisp on the outside and beautifully moist on the inside (especially the centre). I think upping the tapioca starch quotient (mainly because it's easier to tell people to add 1/4 tapioca than 1/6) might have helped with that. I'm not sure exactly what use the sour cream has in this recipe, but if I can in the future I'd like to try it without the sour cream to see if it has any adverse effects, especially because I usually don't house sour cream in my kitchen. (I'm not one for dips or sauces)

As for appearances, this is undoubtedly my most gorgeous creation yet. Having the right piping equipment really does wonders. As you can see from the picture, there is no over-arching design as I was trying to experiment as much as possible. The ones with solid red-pink and green colours were created solely by swirling with either a spoon, some with the help of a fork or chopsticks to create stronger swirls.

The marbled turquoise ones were piped, and the frosting colour was created by swirling blue and yellow food colouring together, which was an idea that occured to me today while I was pondering the impossibility of icing the cupcakes with four different colours (I have 4 food colourings). That would result in too little icing to pipe; not to mention I'd have to wash the piping thing 4 times...and though I picked blue and yellow arbitrarily, I don't think I could have made a better choice. I LOVE turquoise and all pastel colours!

I don't know if you can see from the picture, but I used 3 different icing tips (once again, experimentation - you can see I don't do decorating much, ha) to see which one had the nicest effect. I finally hit on the crescent shaped one, which produced an effect somewhat reminiscent of rose petals. Sweeet! And if you'll look at the cupcake covered in red frosting with green dots, that's supposed to be a flower with leaves, haha. The frosting was getting too liquid and unweildy by then to make nice leaves, but I think I can work on this idea for the future.

I like the roses & the one-direction zigzag (bottom left in top pic) Which is your fav? I want to know!

VERDICT: 10/10

Labels: BAKING

1 BITES